I spit pink on the ground and watch as the cracked clay darkens then blooms with a hundred tiny flowers. Our blood draws life from desolation. Around me the battlefield is soaked in a new-sprung prairie and the air is suffused with pollen and sulphur. The groans of the dying fall limp on the delicate wind that touches the virgin petals. In distant lands warmasters watch as new life is seeded from the old. Trees cast the first shadows seen in this land in an age.
Paddy Dobson
27th April 2021